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Something good is actually coming out of China. Jason Zicha owns Fall River Flyrods and they make custom handcrafted bamboo fly rods. Here’s the China part. He is very pleased with the bamboo coming from his contacts there and business is booming. “We started building fly rods back in 1998 as a side business and took the business full-time in 2009 Because of the amount of volume we are doing. Business has never been better. Right now we have an entire generation coming on that is keen to the fact that technology is superior to high volume manufacturing. With custom rods people are finding out that they can order something that is specifically meant to meet their needs and will give them a much higher performing product than what comes out of the catalogs. On the other hand we have been dealing with China in order to get our bamboo from the Ton Kin region since about 1880. The quality that we are seeing these days by educating the farmers over there, the quality of the bamboo that goes into the bamboo fly rods has never been better as far as being clear, unmarked, relatively straight and unimpacted by the normal farming practices of bamboo.